What do people say about me?

Jesus and his disciples are visiting Caesarea Philippi. This city was made up of a mixed population of Greeks, Romans and Jews. It lay at the foot of Mount Hermon, and had a giant spring that gushed from a cave and tumbled down the valley. The Greeks originally called this town Paneas: and believed that Pan, the Greek God of deserts, lived in the cave. The Romans renamed the city to honor Caesar Augustus and would offer annual prayers in the name of Caesar. And the Jews preached against this this idolatry and prayed for a messiah to liberate them from Roman rule. This was a city that was consumed with gossip – as the various groups of people watched each other and plotted their own futures free of each other. 
This is an appropriate place for Jesus to raise ethical questions about gossip: 
Mark 8:27-29: And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” 
Introduction: Stella was the town gossip and self-appointed supervisor of everyone's morals. She always stuck her nose into other people's business.
Many of the local residents didn't appreciate her activities, but feared her enough to keep their silence. But the day came when she made a mistake. She accused Bert of being an alcoholic. “Bert” she said, “Your pick-up was parked outside of the bar. Everyone knows what happens when a man’s pick-up is outside of a bar”.
Bert was a man of few words. He stared at her for a moment and just walked away without saying a word. Later that evening, he quietly parked his pickup truck in front of her house and walked away, leaving it there all night.
Yup – everyone knows what happens when a man’s pickup is parked outside of a house..
This the trouble with gossip – everyone knows because everyone has been telling the story: but nobody stops to ask “Is this true?’

In today’s scripture passage, Jesus asks the question “Who do people say that I am?”  In other words – what is the gossip about me?
And his disciples admit to the various stories that they have heard: they tell him that people are comparing him to the great prophets of Israel: 
• John The Baptist: King Herod had killed him to silence him – but people see Jesus preaching as powerfully as him.
• Elijah: this is the great Old Testament prophet. There was a deep-rooted belief that Elijah would return from the dead to revive the Kingdom of Israel.
• A great prophet – people had been moved by Jesus teaching and example and were talking about him as standing in the tradition of the great Jewish prophets.
This is human nature: we see someone doing something extraordinary, and we have opinions. 
And so the disciples are sharing public opinions about Jesus: John the Baptist, Elijah, a Prophet…and at this moment Jesus drives home the point: you have told me what everyone else says – but what about you “Who do you say that I am?”.
And here it get really quiet, because the disciples have to look inside of themselves for an answer. Note that out of the twelve, only one had the courage to answer. Peter was the only one willing to dig deep and offer his own opinion. 
We are good at passing on gossip – it is far harder when we are face to face with the person and we have to give our own opinion. Jesus calls his disciples out: Tell me to my face – what are you saying about me?
Here is the thing about gossip – it is easy to put someone in a box when we listen to gossip: Like the story of the town gossip who saw Bert’s pick-up outside of the bar – she thought that she had all the information she needed to describe him. But perhaps her indignation was about her experience of alcohol abuse, and she gave Bert no latitude to be anything more than and alcoholic: or even if he did have a problem, she gave him no space to turn his life around. 
I found this quote from Nadia Bolz-Weber, a Lutheran minister and public theologian: 
The indignant pile-up on a person who everyone has decided is the identified problem can be troubling to me. These attacks are more often fueled by our convictions about an issue than by the actual irredeemability of the individual. …... We so often seem to collapse the distinction around our feelings about an issue and the worth and dignity of a person who has been accused of something we loathe and I wonder what it looks like to just take a breath
Jesus challenges us to go deeper – to look beyond the readily available gossip and wonder about people: when we think we know someone – there is no space for that person to be anything else. I am inviting us to be willing to admit that we do not know everything, and instead to become curious about other people. To be willing to see beyond the first impression: 
Bear with me on this: I want to add one more idea: This invitation to be curious is more than gossip about individuals – it can also be gossip about groups of people.
Before I came to the United States – people from South Africa were eager to tell me about Americans: and most of what I heard was gossip. Everyone had opinions about Americans. Some of it was right, and some of it was wrong. When I became curious, I discovered the rich warm hearts of the people of the Mid-West. 
I see the same happening here in the USA: people have opinions about Mexicans, and about immigrants crossing the southern US border. This week Governor Ron DeSantis put people on a flight to Martha’s Vineyard – And the gossip is that they are illegals. Once we have turned human beings into a category, it becomes OK to use them as a political weapon. And we lose our ability to see them as human beings who are loved by God. Jesus challenges us to become curious – to dig deeper – and to discover that people are far more than a one-dimensional answer.
I want to use a video to make my point:
https://wwwq.youtube.com/watch?v=oZ4YSXv6Xkg
(For those who are online, we are going to mute the sound and a link will be placed on the screen that you can click on) 

Today I am inviting us to move beyond the initial gossip which relies on “What do other people say” to the place that asks the personal question: “What do you say?”. And this begins when we become curious about people, and curious about God’s view of the people we encounter.